Joseph J. Romm's Blog, page 1137

Millions of Barrels of Oil Safely Reach Port in Major Environmental Catastrophe

PORT FOURCHON, LA—In what may be the greatest environmental disaster in the nation's history, the supertanker TI Oceania docked without incident at the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port Monday and successfully unloaded 3.1 million barrels of dangerous crude oil into the United States.

Best.  Onion.  Ever.

Disaster strikes as massive quantities of oil reach their intended destination.

According to witnesses, the catastrophe began shortly after the tanker, which sailed unimpeded across the Gulf of...

Stanford poll: The vast majority of Americans know global warming is real - Florida, Maine, and Massachusetts residents agree: Global warming is here and we're causing it.

Large majorities of Florida, Maine, and Massachusetts residents believe that global warming is real—and that humans are causing it.

So says the latest poll from Jon Krosnick, senior fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University.  Krosnick found that large majorities of Florida, Maine, and Massachusetts residents believe that:

The Earth has been getting warming gradually over the last 100 years (81 percent, 78 percent, and 84 percent, respectively).This ...

Energy and Global Warming News for August 11th: China surpasses U.S. in energy usage; Top U.S. green power cities; Free solar panels to 2.5 million UK homes

IEA: China overtakes the United States as world's largest energy user

Preliminary data from the International Energy Agency (IEA) indicate that China has become the largest energy consumer in the world, having overtaken the United States in the top spot. An IEA chart shows China using roughly 2.25 billion tons of oil last year, while the United States used roughly 2.2 billion tons of oil in 2009. China rose to its top ranking faster than expected because the country was much less affected by...

Daily Mail: "Global warming is real and deeply worrying" - "Greenland appears to be literally cracking up in front of our eyes"

Today's guest blogger is the UK's Joss Garman.

The Daily Mail has become the latest previously 'climate sceptic' newspaper to shift its editorial line to acknowledge that climate change is "real and deeply worrying".

Yesterday the paper's science editor, Michael Hanlon, who could previously be seen as the UK's most influential 'sceptic,' writes:

"I have long been something of a climate-change sceptic, but my views in recent years have shifted. For me, the most convincing evidence that...

New York Times makes excuses while Portugal shows U.S. how to move forward

Our guest blogger is CAP's Richard Caperton, Policy Analyst at the Center for American Progress.

Yesterday's New York Times article ("Portugal Gives Itself a Clean Energy Makeover") on Portugal's transition to a clean energy economy should be welcome news for renewable energy advocates.  Portugal's experience validates what we've all been saying for years: reliance on fossil fuels is dangerous, renewables are affordable, and extensive use of renewable electricity is technically possible. ...

10 indicators of a human fingerprint on climate change

This post by physicist John Cook was first published in Skeptical Science .

The NOAA State of the Climate 2009 report is an excellent summary of the many lines of evidence that global warming is happening. Acknowledging the fact that the planet is warming leads to the all important question:  What's causing global warming? To answer this, here is a summary of the empirical evidence that answer this question. Many different observations find a distinct human fingerprint on climate change:

To get ...

Coal barons at industry retreat plot to indoctrinate children about wonders of coal

You may recall an industry front group that distributed a coloring book on the "advantages" of coal: "Let's Learn About Coal." Think Progress has the latest industry plans to target American youth –  not counting their pollution, that is (See "If you want smarter kids, shut coal plants").

This past weekend, coal company executives convened for the annual West Virginia Coal Association meeting in White Sulphur Springs, WV. The event, which was closed to the public, was held at the lavish

CA economists to Meg Whitman: Your "policy proposals will deepen California's budget crisis and are likely to reduce employment and economic growth."

Guest blogger Rebecca Lefton is writing regularly to keep us up to date about Big Oil's tricky proposition 23 initiative to kill California's clean energy economy. Read more on Prop 23's national repercussions and funding from Texas oil companies.

A group of California economists signed an open letter to Californians warning that gubernatorial nominee Meg Whitman's economic policies would only leave the state's already suffering budget worse off and raise unemployment.  The experts...

Distorting science while invoking science - Debating science shouldn't enable antiscience disinformation

Guest authors Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway share some research from their recent must-read book "Merchants of Doubt," which is reviewed here. The book documents how the cast of characters peddling pseudo-science had been stunningly consistent over the years, from secondhand smoke skeptics to "Star Wars" missile defense proponents to modern climate science deniers. Naomi Oreskes is a professor of history of science and provost of Sixth College at UC San Diego, and Erik Conway is a...

Conservapedia: The theory of relativity is a liberal plot - Except when it is being used to defend the 6000-year age of the Earth or attack Copernicus.

The theory of relativity is a mathematical system that allows no exceptions. It is heavily promoted by liberals who like its encouragement of relativism and its tendency to mislead people in how they view the world.[1:] Here is a list of 24 counterexamples: any one of them shows that the theory is incorrect.

I would have filed this under Signs of the Apocalypse, but we are way past that.  This is more like, Signs that the Apocalypse happened a long time ago but we were all too busy watching ...